Climate Science Glossary

Term Lookup

Settings

Use the controls in the far right panel to increase or decrease the number of terms automatically displayed (or to completely turn that feature off).

Term Lookup

Term:

Settings

Beginner Intermediate Advanced No DefinitionsDefinition Life:

All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Posted on 25 March 2011 by John Cook

If there's one thing global warming skeptics like to do, it's recycle. But alas, not "good for the environment" type recycling. Instead, they dig up old climate myths taken from the scrapheap of scientific history, sometimes debunked decades ago in the peer-reviewed literature. They dust them off and jettison them back into cyberspace. Another form of recycling is the adoption of misinformation techniques used in other areas of science. The tobacco industry mastered the merchandising of doubt - techniques that were readily adopted by climate skeptics.

Another misinformation technique originating from the creation/evolution debate is the "Gish Gallop", named after Duane Gish who in a debate spewed forth an endless torrent of talking points, rendering constructive debate impossible. You have to be crazy to attempt to answer all the points of a Gish Gallop. Crazy or Skeptical Science's own Dana "cyborg" Nuccitelli, who over just the last month tackled Gish Gallops from Lubos Motl, John Christy and Gregg Thompson.

A new Powerpoint originating in Australia, "Reconsidering Climate Change" (WARNING! 108 MB!), takes the Gish Gallop to new levels. Over the past 4 years, we here at Skeptical Science have been gradually accumulating the many skeptic arguments that propagate through the blogosphere. Nearly all of these arguments have been singlehandedly crammed into a single Powerpoint presentation. I read most of the Powerpoint, dutifully noting all the arguments it raised, although I confess I wasn't able to get past the extended rant about how those convinced that humans were causing global warming were akin to Nazis. Sorry, but I have better things to do with my time than listen to that nonsense.

Nevertheless, the number of arguments used up to that point were extensive. Here is a list of them all as well as one-liner rebuttals (which link to much more detailed rebuttals, often featuring multiple levels of information):

One last note: the Powerpoint mentions Skeptical Science in the middle of the presentation, but unfortunately links to the wrong URL, skepticalscience.com.au. However, as there are so many other errors to correct, I've registered skepticalscience.com.au and redirected it to skepticalscience.com. One less error to correct!

Comments

Oh dear. I've spent a while to convert the file into something a bit more web friendly and so far it's failed. This leads me to the conclusion that they're not really interested in passing their message to a wider audience.

I would advise that you edit the post to advise that the pps file for download is over 100MB mind you, which is a ludicrous size for a presentation slide deck.

00

Moderator Response:

[DB] Done, thanks! It took over 3 hours just to pull the links out of the file.

Just last night I had a discussion with my wife about the intractable nature of this ongoing (non-)debate with the deniers. It's bad enough that they collectively repeat the same long-ago debunked arguments ad infinitum (ooh, had a Monckton moment there and lapsed into Latin), but proving any one of them wrong on any one point does no good. The person or "think tank" or "news network" pays no price for being blatantly wrong and simply trundles along, spewing the same falsehood.

How did we wind up in a position where even science is so politicized that accuracy no longer matters to a large portion of the public???

One of your items on the list of dud sceptic arguments is: "Trenberth can't account for lack of warming" and your answer is:

"Trenberth was talking about the details of energy flow - not whether global warming was happening".

Not quite true.

Trenberth was highlighting the fact that in Aug09 when his now famous paper was published - he could not account for more than about 60% of the warming imbalance which was postulated by Hansen in 2005 (0.9W/sq.m)

Since then; Knox and Douglas published a paper in Aug10 which showed that 2003-08 data for OHC contect was flat or slightly negative (cooling)for the top 700m and deep ocean of approx +0.09W/sq.m (Purkey & Johnson).

Ken, you could try clicking on the link to the full writeup on this issue. Your suggestion that it puts the warming imbalance in question is incorrect. We know there is an imbalance because we have measured that directly. What we can't measure is where the extra energy is accumulating within the climate system.

In addition to the Sun being cooler, the Earth was hotter -- at times a *lot* hotter -- than it is now.

According to Dr. Richard Alley (in his memorable 2009 AGU talk), sea surface temperatures approached 100F in the tropics during the Cretaceous Hothouse period. But along with 100F sea surface temperatures, you will get dangerous levels of atmospheric heat and humidity, as in dew points well over 90F. Once the dew-point hits 95 F or so, *everyone* caught outside in conditions like that for more than a few hours will die of heat-stroke. Everyone.

To keep your body's core from overheating, your skin temperature needs to be kept at 95F or below. Get dew points near or above 95F, and this becomes impossible.

If we woke up to a Cretaceous Hothouse climate tomorrow, billions of people would die of heat stroke long before they had a chance to starve to death.

I love the term "Gish Gallop". Maybe it would be useful to have an extensive set of such labels, and a lexicon, for the processes that skeptics use. This could then be used to build a matrix to classify the skeptic and/or the article/publication, to help avoid getting bogged down in some of the recycled detail.

00

Moderator Response: [DB] Over on the 2nd Law, Meet the Denominator and Waste Heat threads we have PRATT in action...

Last time I looked the 'Measured" CERES figure quoted for the warming imbalance was +6.4W/sq.m

This plainly impossible number is then 'corrected' down to 0.9W/sq.m by a process which is the equivalent of a circular scientific argument.

The argument is goes like this: " Hansen (2005) thinks it is about 0.85 +/-0.15, - +0.9 for short. We build up a number of heating and cooling forcings by modelling and maths which sums to +0.9W/sq.m ".

"We then 'correct' the +6.4W/sq.m down to +0.9W/sq.m and say that the meaurement agrees with the modelling!!"

So CBD what is your latest information on the direct measurement of the imbalance?

I conducted a private correspondence with Dr Trenberth in early 2010. He is a 'class act' and was very generous with time devoted to responding while travelling to conferences etc.

Since I have not asked his permission to make public any of this exchange, I am not at liberty to quote any part of it here.

However, Since Dr Pielke responded to SKS in a very interesting thread - would you consider asking Dr Trenberth to respond on SKS to a number of questions regarding the current state of knowledge on the whole subject of warming imbalance and OHC measurement?

I am sure many regular contributors would jump at the chance to participate. Me (and I hope BP) would be happy to ask some questions.

00

Moderator Response:

[DB] That is a great suggestion! We'll look into it; thanks for taking the time to make it!

Ken, you are correct about the CERES measurements, but still lack foundation for your conclusion that 'positive warming imbalance is in question'.

There are too many other measurements confirming this imbalance. Consider the standard 'Trenberth diagram' of various energy flows within the climate system. These values were not just made up, but rather each is based on measurements and analysis. That is, we have long measured incoming solar radiation and identified its range of fluctuation (fairly small)... measurements of increased 'back radiation' from the greenhouse effect have been taken at the surface and found to correlate with expected results from the models, as have satellite measurements of decreased outgoing radiation in the same bands. Et cetera. The point being that these values are not just randomly spit out of a climate model in complete isolation. Each is checked against real world data to whatever extent possible.

Yes, there are many uncertainties, but when all available data points to a positive warming imbalance there are simply no grounds for claiming that imbalance is in question.